CFI Team Presentation

CFI Team Presentation February 26, 2009

Presenters Laura van Keulen, AP Data & Technology Alex Moore, English

2008-2009 Projects Continuing Projects from 2007-2008: -Note Taking -Writing Style Guide -Technology New for 2008-2009: -Cross Curricular Collaboration

Writing Style Guide: Student Benefit • Time is measured the same way in English and social studies classes. A fourth of a note in a music course has the same meaning as a fourth of a pizza in a math course. Do paragraphs in English, social studies, and drama classes share anything in common? Dali, Salvador. The Persistence of Memory. 1931. Museum of Modern Art,New York. 30 Jan. 2009 <http://cord.rutgers.edu/stemcellcourse/20050521-dali-clock.jpg>.

Writing Style Guide: Further Development • Teachers from several departments will design lesson plans to introduce the Writing Style Guide to students in each discipline. • The Guide will be offered online and cost no money to produce. • Members of the CFI Team will present the Style Guide to each academic department on February 23. We will then facilitate discussion and collect feedback in preparation for future revisions.

Writing Style Guide: Recent Developments • We added new information. • We asked for feedback from the APs. • We are piloting this Guide with four groups of ten students in different academic disciplines. The members of the CFI Team will distribute the guide and ask each student to keep a feedback log throughout February and March.

Technology • The CFI continues to celebrate teachers’ effective use of technology in the classroom. We recently promoted intervisitations in classes where teachers are using Web sites, SmartBoards, and other modern teaching tools. • The CFI will conduct workshops on Daedalus and ARIS to equip educators with information about new technological resources that allow us to more accurately assess student understanding and adjust our teaching accordingly.

Technology: • Use technology to increase communication: • Support the teachers through ongoing PDs to develop subject-based web pages • Help teachers develop online discussion forums for their students • Increase communication via e-mail between teachers and students using the Daedalus system (PD)

Technology - Daedalus

Notemaking?! Academic success requires various competencies, among them the ability to know and use a variety of tools and techniques to generate and organize information and ideas. I refer to the tools and techniques on this page as "notemaking" because "taking notes" is passive: just as we must make meaning, so we must make notes---in our head, on the page, and in our notebooks. http://www.englishcompanion.com/Tools/notemaking.html

Math Department Meeting • “Students are not good at taking notes.” • “This note taking approach should be reinforced at all levels and should be taught in all freshmen classes on the first day of class.” • “There is a misconception that kids should not write in a math class. It is helpful to ask students to review their notes to find answers as a means of holding students accountable. There must be common approaches that are used by all teachers.”

English Department Meeting • “Some students try to copy down everything that is said.” • “If students do not take notes, they will not be able to succeed in my class.” • “It is important to impress upon students the importance of being able to take good notes in college.”

Science Department Meeting • “I use Cornell Notes in my classes. I teach students to format their notes in this way with a lesson that includes a guiding question for a summary. This is a lesson that I teach in the beginning of the year as I’m introducing my syllabus.” • “It is worthwhile to teach note taking every year to reinforce the skill.” • “Students learn in different ways. The Cornell Notes system might not be for everyone.”

Social Studies Department Meeting • “I remind students to look over their notes and highlight their notes.” • “If note taking is not reinforced [in multiple grades and subjects], students will not develop the skill.” • “I teach freshmen to read and take notes and also highlight important information as it’s being taught in class.”

Note Taking PD • “Some think that important skills like outlining and note taking were taught in middle school, but this is often not the case.” • “The responsibility to teach students note taking should not fall solely on the ninth grade teachers. It needs to be reinforced at the higher grade levels.” • “There need to be benchmarks set for the development of note taking skills.”

Designing Lessons to Meet Students’ Needs – Feedback Forms • The workload for our class was _________. a) 5% very or somewhat light b) 95% somewhat or very heavy • The instructor treated us as if we were _________ intelligent than we are. a) 7% less b) 93% more

Note Taking: Further Development • Teacher: Mr. Moore • Student Population: the bottom 50% of the teacher’s E1 classes according to eighth-grade ELA exam scores • Goal: Students will improve their ability to synthesize information, which will be demonstrated by an increase of one point on a ten-point rubric on our Regents-based note taking assessments.

Note Taking: Further Development

Note Taking: Wider Implementation • Teachers: The Note Taking Team (NTT) • One teacher from each of the following departments: • English • Mathematics • Science • Social Studies

Note Taking: Science • Lesson plan #4: Using Notes in Science (Ms. Pace) • Reason for Lesson: The science educator noticed that students were not successfully focusing on what they needed to know in order to succeed on course assessments, such as examinations. The studying of many students was not focused. In order to address this, Ms. Pace decided to teach students how to use their notes to create a study sheet that would then help them to prepare for an examination. • Aim: How can I organize my notes into a study guide? • Instructional Objectives: • Students will understand the value of good note taking. • Students will learn how to extract the salient information from their notes and organize it into a study guide. • Performance Objectives: • Students will begin to create a review sheet in class. • Students will earn higher grades on the next examination. • Materials: transparency with skeleton with the beginning of a sample review sheet, review sheet forms for students to begin to complete • Procedure: • Hook 3 minutes Explain to students that the lesson today needs to be taught because of the strengths and weaknesses of the students in the room: Several of them need to develop this skill of synthesizing and reorganizing information in order to create helpful study guides (data-driven instruction). • Modeling 10 minutes Use the overhead projector or laptop projector to demonstrate the beginning of an effective study guide. Elicit student responses to fill in the beginning of the guide. • Pair Activity 20 minutes Students use their notes and work in pairs to fill out a worksheet that will act as a sample study guide. This is submitted at the end of the period but will be returned before the test. • Summary and Share Out 7 minutes Students share their experiences and explain how they were able to create review sheets. The educator reminds students of the procedure that can be followed to use notes to create a study guide. • Homework: Use your notes to create a review sheet for the upcoming test.

Cross Curricular Collaboration • Teachers: • two teachers of American Literature • two teachers of U.S. History • Additional academic and studio teachers • Teachers will produce new ideas for cross curricular collaboration in today’s workshop.

THE END(Please applaud now.)

CFI Team Presentation